Bristol Renaissance Faire: Revisited

Two years ago, I wrote about my Bristol Renaissance Faire experience. In case you missed it, the post can be found here. I went back to Bristol today, squeezing in a few hours of anachronistic fun between the Faire’s opening and the skies unleashing holy hell.

Rather than rehash the points I made before (which still hold true: the dollars add up fast, and it’s an honestly great time), I thought I’d share some of the pictures I took today.

Found in a pirate-themed souvenir tent, located in close proximity to a replica pirate ship:

Seconds after spying that mug, I found the most metal drinking vessel ever:

That’s a man’s mug; the kind of mug you should be drinking grain alcohol or the blood of a defeated warrior from.

People-watching is the engine that drives the entire Ren Faire experience. My calves hurt sympathetically as I watched the man on stilts wind his way through the Faire:

The man on stilts made me think of the not-so-threatening Daredevil bad guy Stilt-Man. This is how my mind works, I’m afraid.

On accident, I learned how glass is blown (heh) during a public demonstration.

Shortly after the glass demo, I threw throwing stars into a wall (an old ninja Renaissance tradition) and followed that up with a round of pirate knife-throwing.

After my brief round of weapons-hurling, I decided that the centerpiece of my lunch should be the Ren Fair cliché: the turkey leg.

I was quickly reminded that I’ve never once enjoyed a turkey leg. Turkey’s the blandest of all meats, and eating it in “leg form” is a messy, feral, experience that feels incredibly awkward in public.

After lunch, we walked over to the jousting arena, where knights on horseback showed their jousting prowess. It was like the dinner show at Medieval Times, only without the awful plot.

Once the jousting was over, it was impossible to avoid Vegetable Justice, located just twenty feet away. To reiterate the concept, a topless man in a stockade spews insults at people who pay to throw tomatoes at his head. It’s amazing.

There were more curious Faire denizens than I remember from last time. Straight outta Atlantis, this guy:

And then there were wood nymphs, or something.

I’m not totally sure what they were doing, but I felt like I was reading Elfquest as I watched them.

Nothing says “family fun” like a petting zoo, so I took the kids into the gated, goated, landscape beyond the general food area. Here’s a real goat:

I don’t think I could have washed my hands more obsessively after the petting zoo experience. For that moment in time, I was a 15th century Howard Hughes.

By 1:30 p.m., the skies looked menacing, like, this kind of menacing:

We took that as our cue to leave. In a case of perfect timing, a deluge hit within five minutes of pulling out of the fairgrounds.

I’ve already decided that I’ll be going back again. In fact, I’ll probably grow a beard and wear a cloak for the next trip.

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This blog has bounced around a lot of sites. As a result, you may see missing images and/or goofy formatting on older posts. I’ll get to it all eventually.